The Raider’s Daughter, Page 2

"I love you too, Papa. So much."

  He chucked her under the chin, then turned and walked out the door. Lucy hesitated until she heard the uneven tread of his boot soles on the stairs, then she hurried to the box. Collapsing before the fire, she picked up the sealed letter.

  The skin on her arms crawled as she stared once again at the inscription. Lucy shuddered, hastily shoving the vellum aside. Her young sisters feared monsters hiding beneath the staircase or underneath their beds. Lucy's childhood monsters had been terrifyingly real.

  It had always chilled her blood—the knowledge that in England there was a grave with her christened name inscribed on the headstone, a tomb with a tiny empty coffin buried beneath the earth. Jenny d'Autrecourt's false death had been orchestrated with sinister perfection.

  For five years Emily d'Autrecourt had grieved for her three-year-old daughter, believing the fever that had taken her young husband had also stolen her child. For five years Lucy had been neglected and frightened and alone.

  From the first moment Lucy heard the story of her abduction, she had cast her grandparents, the duke and duchess of Avonstea, in the role of scurrilous monsters.

  They were aristocratic beasts who had developed a sadistic plan to rid themselves forever of the wife and child that were a reminder of their son's shameful alliance with a simple vicar's daughter.

  Only a handful of people had ever known the truth about what the duke and duchess had done, and most of those were dead now. Lucy had been content to let Jenny rest in peace, while Ian Blackheath had let it be known that any further attempts to harm mother or child would result in his publishing the d'Autrecourts' entire villainous scheme in the London Gazette.

  Thirteen years had passed since the confrontation between Pendragon and Avonstea. Years of silence when that other life had seemed like nothing but a dream. But now someone was turning up a spade-full of that grave, releasing a thousand buried questions and nameless fears.

  Lucy's eyes fixed on the box as if it were waiting to poison her. Maybe it already had, filling her with sick trepidation and dizzying doubts. Hazy memories and terrors that still whispered to her in nightmares.

  She peeked over the edge of the box. A jumble of objects had been packed in straw to preserve them on their journey: a rag-stuffed doll that must have belonged to Jenny long before, a gold watch engraved with Alexander d'Autrecourt's name. An odd shiver worked through Lucy as she cupped the latter in her hand. It was the first time she ever touched anything that had belonged to the young musician who had sired her.

  Emily d'Autrecourt hadn't been able to save a single keepsake from the life she'd known in England. Even her wedding ring had been pawned to keep the family from debtors' prison.

  As Lucy fingered her father's watch, it was as if the ghostly man she'd idealized as a young god of music were taking on substance, an aura of reality both intriguing and unnerving.

  She reached into the box again, her fingers closing on another sheet of vellum, its edges crumbling with age. Musical staffs were ruled across it with precision, inked notes rambling across them. Her eyes skimmed the notes, the music playing in her mind, as if it were her father's voice beckoning her from the realm of the dead. She glanced at the blotted inscription at the bottom of the page: "For Master St. Cyr on the occasion of his twelfth birthday, Harlestone Castle. Lord Alexander d'Autrecourt."

  A birthday gift? Written for another child? An odd sense of hurt streaked through Lucy. She had always cherished the fact that her father had composed the "Night Song" for her alone. It was a part of him that only she could possess. Some shared secret, a special bond. Never once had she considered that he might have written melodies for his students as well, rewarding them for their work the way many music masters did.

  It shouldn't have bothered her so much, but as Lucy set the pages aside, she realized that it did.

  The knot in her throat tightened as she reached into the box for the last object, a jeweled miniature suspended from a faded black ribbon.

  Lucy took the case gingerly in her hand. A folded scrap of vellum had been slipped between the gold frame and the porcelain.

  Lucy tugged the bit of paper free and let it fall to her lap. Then she held the miniature to the fire, eyeing the image of her birth father with an inner hunger that astonished her.

  Light danced across the features of a youth who looked seventeen. He was dressed in stiff aristocratic splendor, but his face was that of a poet, framed in an aura of soft gold hair. His lips curved in an uncertain smile that was far too sensitive for the harsh reality of the world, but his eyes brimmed with dreams, dreams that had been woven in the music he had written. Dreams he had passed to his daughter, along with the blue of his eyes and the gold of his hair.

  Lucy stared into those features, trying desperately to conjure up her own memories of the man, but there was only the music, a silken web of mystery, magic, that spoke to her heart in a language far more eloquent than words.

  The St. Cyr boy for whom her father had written the birthday song would have memories of Alexander d'Autrecourt, Lucy thought bitterly. The boy would remember Alexander's face, eyes, the way his voice had sounded. She felt a swift stab of animosity toward this boy she had never met.

  "I don't remember you, Papa," Lucy whispered to the painted image. "It isn't fair."

  She felt a quick jolt of anger at herself, a sense that she was being disloyal to Ian Blackheath, the man who had loved her and taken care of her for the past twelve years. The father she adored more than anyone on earth.

  She should just stuff the things back into the box and shove them into the fire, obliterating them along with the gnawing feeling that she had been waiting a lifetime for this box to arrive.

  Instead, she looked at the letter, which had fallen to the floor beside her, the red sealing wax clinging to it like a gobbet of blood. For an instant she hesitated. Then she picked it up and cracked the wafer of wax with her thumbnail. She unfolded the page, time seeming to freeze as she looked down at what appeared to be a verse, fresh and newly inked in an elegant hand.

  Roses watered by a grieving mother's tears

  Bloom where an angel-child is said to sleep

  Beside her long-dead father,

  Stolen by fever, rapacious, wild.

  But I know it was not cruel fates that swept them both away.

  Rather, the powerful hand of a Lion who would play God.

  A Lion who roasts now upon hell's grate for his dark deeds.

  By all that is holy, I beg this of you.

  Do not let the Lion triumph in the end. Come home, Jenny.

  Undo his demon madness with the secret I tell to you.

  The roses weep, not over one empty grave, but two.

  Lucy scrambled to her feet, her heart thundering. What kind of brutal joke was this? Who would have sent this to her? Tempt her to believe... what? That Alexander d'Autrecourt was alive?

  It was ludicrous to think that possible for even a heartbeat. This was some monster's attempt to torment her, terrify her. Someone else playing at ghosts to amuse themselves.

  But nothing about the objects scattered across the floor was amusing. Something about this rang of a subtle cruelty, of something sinister. She held the note to the light again and scanned the final lines.

  Jenny,

  I will await our reunion at Perdition's Gate, Fleet Street. I regret bringing you to such a place, but circumstances are such that it is unavoidable. I shall be in the third room on the second floor every Thursday evening for the next three months only. Be swift, my beloved daughter. Yr. Obedient

  Daughter... My God, this person expected her to believe that he was her father? Expected her to race across the ocean, to meet him in a place called Perdition's Gate? She would have to be insane. It was far more likely that the person who'd sent her the box was some miscreant who wanted to extort money from the wealthy Ian Blackheath. A cutthroat who intended to kidnap her or worse.

  She might even be willing to believe that
the box was from the d'Autrecourts, that they were plotting to finish the dastardly deed they had begun when she was a child so they could wipe away the scandal of her existence in the most permanent manner possible.

  But a letter from Alexander d'Autrecourt?

  No. She could not believe that it was so.

  Lucy grabbed up a petticoat, dragging it on with trembling fingers. Her chin bumped up a notch. If some maniac thought they could terrorize the Blackheaths, they were dead wrong. She'd tell her father, and that would be the end of this scheme. Pendragon and his daughter would make whoever was responsible for this sorry they had ever been born!

  Half an hour later, dressed and determined, she marched into the drawing room. She fully intended to demand a private interview with her father. But as the door opened, Lucy's heart wrenched, her fingers folding tight over the disturbing letter.

  Emily Rose d'Autrecourt Blackheath was sitting in a wing-backed chair, her mahogany tresses glistening in the candle shine, her face radiant as she smiled up at her husband. Five-year-old Norah had obviously escaped Nurse again and was curled up asleep on what little remained of Emily's lap, while the legendary Raider Pendragon stroked his tiny daughter's cheek as if she were an angel fallen straight down from heaven.

  Emily caught sight of Lucy hovering at the doorway and gave her daughter a beatific smile. "So there is the guilty party," she said. "You are in very deep trouble, Lucy-love."

  Lucy stuffed the hand that held the note behind her back, alarmed. "G-Guilty? I—"

  "Norah told us that you'd taught her how to sneak out of the nursery. She was to hide like a wee little mouse in the shadows, until Mrs. Gamp slipped out to gossip with Tansy, then all Norah had to do was scurry down the back stairs."

  Lucy flushed, relief surging through her. "Norry's bright as a new button. She would have figured it out for herself soon enough."

  Ian chuckled. "Especially since you told her there were 'sweet cakies' down here on a tray."

  Lucy stared down at her tiny sister, who was blissfully unaware that there were more frightening monsters than the imaginary ones that lurked beneath the bed, and truths that were far more bitter than Nurse's tonics.

  The letter seemed to cut Lucy's fingers, burn them with the secrets that it held. She trembled, suddenly stricken by what it would mean to her sister and to her parents if there were any truth at all in the message from England.

  If Alexander d'Autrecourt were alive it would shatter twelve years of laughter and love, invalidate the marriage of Emily and Ian. It would brand the little ones in the Blackheath nursery with the label of bastard.

  Lucy reeled at the implications. Hadn't her mother endured enough pain? Hadn't Ian Blackheath sacrificed enough?

  How could she tell them? Her mother was blossoming with yet another child, while her father was half crazed with worry over her. What could the dread Raider Pendragon do? Sail to England, find whoever was behind this twisted jest, and make certain they could never hurt those he loved?

  What if what the letter claimed were true? The thought of Ian Blackheath and Alexander d'Autrecourt confronting each other was so ghastly it made Lucy's stomach churn. She couldn't risk that happening, no matter how unlikely it was that her birth father was alive. Pendragon could never be told, could never confront whoever was responsible for this.

  But the Raider's daughter could.

  The idea struck her with the force of a lightning bolt.

  She could go to England and take care of this matter, and no one else would ever have to know. No one else would have to be savaged by these terrible doubts.

  This was insane! It would be a mad goose chase, with nothing to guide her but a musical score dedicated to some total stranger and a clandestine meeting at an establishment whose name already whispered of hell.

  But what other choice did she have?

  Lucy's fingers tightened, crumpling the note. She surreptitiously stuffed it beneath the lace at her wrist. When she turned to face the others in the room, Lucy's eyes had that determined gleam her parents had learned to regard with a healthy dose of dread.

  "I've been feeling a need to escape myself lately, just like Norah has," Lucy said airily. "So I've come up with the most marvelous idea." She turned to Claree Wilkes with a smile that could wheedle the key to heaven right out of St. Peter's hands. "Claree, how would you like some company on your journey to England?"

  Emily gasped, her teacup clattering against its saucer.

  Ian's eyes filled with astonishment, then the dangerous glint that had been the signature of Pendragon. "What the blazes, girl? Did you hit your head when you were out riding?"

  Emily eased herself out from beneath the drowsing Norah. The swell of pregnancy made her look all the more fragile and ethereal. "Lucy, this is so—so sudden."

  "Not really, Mama. I've been thinking about it for a long time, but I never knew how to broach the subject with you and Papa."

  "You've been lambasting us with your opinions from the first moment you set foot on Blackheath land," Ian challenged. "Why should this be any different?"

  Lucy groped for a reason her parents would believe, praying that for once Ian wouldn't be able to see through her dissembling. "I didn't know how to tell you that... that..." She turned back to her mother and caught up her hands. "Mama, please try to understand. There's this empty place inside me that needs to be filled. Filled with music that I can't experience here in Virginia. London would be a feast of concerts and operas, theater. I could stay for six months or so, maybe a year, until Claree is settled in. You know how nervous she is around strangers. She'll be miserable in England without anyone she knows."

  Lucy turned to Claree Wilkes. "I know it's abominably rude of me to invite myself along. But you're leaving so soon, there's hardly time for delicate hints and proper languishing looks."

  "I'd a-adore having you, dear. You can't imagine how much," Claree said with the endearing lisp that had made her painfully shy. She darted a questioning glance at Ian and Emily. "I've been p-pure dreading being a diplomat's wife. All the entertaining, and—and... It would be so comforting to have someone from home to keep me company, child. And as for you, it would be the opportunity of a lifetime."

  Claree turned pleading eyes to her husband, and Lucy could see the shadowy grief in her eyes for the daughters they would never have. "J-Just think, John. We could give Lucy a London season."

  "You could spend a season in hell, you mean!" Ian blustered. "You're going on a diplomatic mission. Knowing Lucy, she'll stir up another war!" He shot his daughter a glare so blistering she half expected her skin to peel. "What about your mother, Lucy? The baby coming?"

  Lucy felt a quick jab of guilt.

  "Ian, hush," Emily chided. "If Lucy lingers about, waiting for all the babes we intend to put in that cradle, she'll never leave Blackheath Hall. She's a woman grown. She has her own life to lead."

  "I've no objection as long as she leads it on this side of the ocean!"

  "But there are things we can never give Lucy here, no matter how much we might wish to. She would be with Claree and John. She would be loved, safe."

  "That girl wouldn't be safe if she were shackled in the Williamsburg gaol!" Ian bellowed. "We're talking about Lucy here. A loose cannon, unleashed in England. For God's sake, an hour ago the little hellion was dangling out windows and dressing up like a ghost!"

  His hands closed over Emily's arms, his voice tight. "Don't you understand, Emily Rose? They would be in England. The d'Autrecourts. God knows what they might do!"

  "They can't hurt us now," Emily insisted. Lucy winced, her mother's soft words cutting like a lash.

  "The old duke died eight years ago," Emily said. "And Granville, the eldest, died before that. Alexander's brother Edward holds the dukedom now. Edward would never hurt her. He adored Alexander. As for the rest of the d'Autrecourts, they won't even acknowledge she's alive."

  "How could they?" Ian demanded. "They have their tidy little grave tucked up in t
he family crypt and their tragic story about how she died. It might prove a trifle awkward if their long-dead granddaughter popped up in the middle of a London soiree."

  "The d'Autrecourts have more reason to hide the truth than anyone. Besides, Lucy would be the guest of one of the first diplomats England has dealt with since the war. I hardly think they'd care to alienate her guardians."

  "She doesn't belong in the midst of a pack of aristocratic dogs with their noses stuck so high in the air they don't give a damn who they trample over. That was why we fought the blasted war, to make certain our children were free of their power. Lucy belongs here with us."

  "Do you really believe that?" Emily cupped her palm tenderly along the stubborn jut of her husband's jaw. "Or are you afraid that some dashing English rogue will carry her off to his castle and we'll never see her again?"

  Lucy saw her father flinch, his cheekbones flooding with color. "Of course not! No Englishman in his right mind would take on a headstrong, wild-blooded, impossible little termagant like Lucy."

  His words trailed off, and Lucy could see the very real dread in her father's eyes. "There's not an Englishman alive who could tame her," he said softly. "Or one who could be worthy of such a treasure."

  "I'm not trundling off with 'prospective bride' painted on my forehead, Papa. All I want to do is take a holiday with John and Claree. For a year at most."

  "Barely an hour ago you were claiming you would stay here forever, the next moment you're packing your trunk for England. I don't understand. Lucy, help me to understand."

  The words hurt Lucy more than any others could have. From the first moment she had squared off against Ian Blackheath they had discovered they were kindred spirits, so much alike that they understood each other without words.

  She had told him everything: from the fact that his amber waistcoat made him look like an overripe squash, to the sad, secret fear she'd had when she'd first arrived at Blackheath Hall so many years before—the fear that she was so wicked inside no one could ever love her.

  For the first time in her life, Lucy turned away from the question in Ian Blackheath's crystal-blue eyes.